SFWDA Leadership Meeting Minutes

Southern Four Wheel Drive Association

SFWDA Leadership and Board of Directors Online Meeting

Monday, June 22, 2015 8:00 PM EST

Attendees:

Ray Stanley, President

Doyle Punches, Treasurer

Flint Holbrook, Director of Conservation and Land Management

Walter Shafer, Web Administrator and Public Relations

Jon Plaza, Director of Public Relations

Aimee Darnell, Recording Secretary

Jeremy Rose, Co-Director of Membership

Brian Overly, Vice President

Tony Wilson, Rock Corp 4x4

Brian Staley,  East TN 4WD Club

Al Sweney, Trick N’ Traction

Barry Flowers, Stones River Jeep Club

Jim Berliner, Trick N’ Traction

Aaron Roddy, Ohio River Four Wheel Drive Club

Denver Issacs, Scenic City 4WD Club

John Galbreath, Hardline Crawlers

Tony Chaapel, Georgia Bounty Runners

Jay Bird, Georgia Bounty Runners

 Roger Theurer, STLC Association

Membership updates

            • Clubs – 28 Clubs + 843 Members

• 1360+ Total Members (Total 1700 +)

• Premium Members Update – 69 Total

• 2886 Facebook Members as of 06.22.2015

Clubs with active dialog on becoming members:

            West TN Off Road (Jackson TN)

            Triad Jeep Club (Troy NC)

            Evansville Area Jeepers (Indiana)

            CNC 4x4 (North Carolina)

Business Renewals

            Black Mountain Off Road (Harlan KY)

            EVAC Emergency Preparedness Equipment & Supply LLC (Rock Island TN)

Business member target:  Coghill Jeep (Knoxville TN)

            No contact has been made with Coghill Jeep at this time.

            Brian suggested Jared Slabel as a contact at Coghill Jeep.

Jon has started a conversation with Rice dealership. 

• SFWDA Traffic

Bleeping Jeep website has logged almost 22K views for the SFWDA Educational Videos with a total of 60K estimated minutes watch.

Calendar Updates:

 • July 28, 2015 – UFWDA Annual Meeting (Flint Holbrook SFWDA Rep)

•September 22, 2015 – Board of Directors and Leadership Council Meeting

•September 24-27 – Dixie Run 29, Golden Mountain Park, Sparta, TN

•October 3, 2015 – Knox Off Road "Wheeler's for the Wounded” benefiting Smoky Mtn. Service Dogs" event at Windrock Park

•October 20, 2015 - Board of Directors Work Session

•October/November, 2015 – SFWDA Meet and Ride, TBD (Morris Mountain, AL)

•November, 2015 - Board of Directors Work Session (As Required)

•December 6, 2015 – SFWDA Annual Meeting and Leader Council

TrailFest 2015 Recap

•Total Attendance – 392 Total

•150 Full Weekend Driver

•110 Full Weekend Passenger

•95 Saturday Only Driver   

•22 Saturday Only Passenger

•392 Meals Sold, Served 295 Meals (Commitment for 300)

•AOP Costs for TrailFest 2015 - $7,735

•Total Revenue $23,050   

•Total Expenses $14,383  

•NET - $10,130 including adjustments   

Survey feedback on Trailfest 2015

            Overall rating:  very good

            Value for the money:  a lot of value

            Organized:  very organized

            Online registration: very good

            Onsite registration: very good

            Desirable features: open park trails/ guided trail rides

            Receiving add’l information:  email

Comments from Leadership group:

Traffic:  Over all everyone thought the traffic flow was good. The only negative comment was when guided trail groups going through there seemed to be an overlap of general park traffic that intercepted the guided trail traffic.

In the future we need to think about traffic management for large guided groups on the trail systems.

Registration: We need to have the registration for rides open the entire time of event.

Newer members want to know about the trails, we need a knowledgeable person who can answer questions about the trails skill levels.

Volunteers:  Need to start considering a process for individuals or clubs that step up and volunteer.    A suggestion made for a volunteer only raffle.   The amount of time volunteered would equal one raffle ticket; 4 hours = 4 tickets.

Unlimited Off Road Expo Recap

Total visitors June 5 - 7, 2015: 13120

Total vehicles at the Tavern & Cavern Charity Night Crawl: 1887                          

This is the first event SFWDA has set up as a vendor.  Something to consider for other large scale events.

June SFWDA Meet and Ride Recap

• Hosted by the Georgia Bounty Runners

• 48 Vehicles and approximately 75 people

• Jay Bird conducted the meeting portion of the ride

• One Issue: Ford Ranger PU Rolled over on an off camber trail.

     Curtis and Rita Barnhardt are OK.

Bantam Jeep Recap

2937 Jeeps in attendance

Jeeps from 38 states and Canada

25,000 people over 3 days in attendance

Guinness World Record Parade was comprised of 2,420 Jeeps

6th annual Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival on June 10-12, 2016

 Additional Updates

          UFWDA Four Wheeler of the Year

Curtis Barnhardt Nomination

ORBA National Advocate

·         Jeffrey Dozier Contribution Page 29 on the Sand Lick Area

·         Daniel Boone National Forest Scenic Byway

Preliminary Agreement on Access, appeal has been withdrawn

Scheduled Ride 26-27

Vandalism Update Uwharrie National Forest

Chris has organized a couple of work days to put up barriers to prevent ATVs cutting road trails through the forest in areas they could not make it over the obstacles.  Since the work day (6-13), the fencing has been torn down, the barriers relocated.

We are continuing to work with the archeological reports that keep threatening the existence of the Uwharrie system.

SFWDA Grant Program

            •2015 Educational YouTube Video – Phase 2

                        Should see a late summer for video release  

Future topics for consideration:

Fire Safety

Managing fluids and other materials on the trail

Advanced Recovery Techniques

•2015 Rock Solid Picnic Area Grant Request

            Target completion: late August 2015

•2015 Review of Grant Process

            We are not getting the attention or traction from clubs.

Set something up to send a club individual to get trained and use the grant process to fund the educational training.

Example:  Certified Master Trainer for Tread Lightly Training Classes

Big Creek possible SFWDA Grant Request

Entrance road issues getting to the park property. 

Rain has made road worse.

Grant request of $10K for gravel, new gate, drainage work, etc.

SFWDA has asked Scott to revisit grant request with new quotes. 

Dixie Run 2015 Planning

           38 registrations

             21 passengers

             5 registered for the Ladies Ride 

Pre-registration has increased from years past.

To encourage early registration, SFWDA has offered as perks:

First 50 SFWDA Member registrations receive a SFWDA LED Flashlight

Next 100 SFWDA Member registrations receive a SFWDA First Aid Kit

Next 100 SFWDA Member registrations receive 10 Raffle tickets

Registration Costs

SFWDA Member $99.00

SFWDA Passenger/ Child Over 6 $29.00

SFWDA Saturday Only $49.00

SFWDA Saturday Only

Spectator/Passenger/ Child Over 6 $19.00

Meeting adjourned.

Southern Four Wheel Drive Continues to Gain Momentum

    As we tally up the results from an exciting year in 2014, it's clear that SFWDA is continuing on the momentum of renewed enthusiasm! After just recently adding several more new business members we are connecting to the Off Road business industry in exciting new ways. We have a renewed sense of energy among our clubs and members, and we are beginning to all become better focused on how to strive together.

 Just this week alone we have added two new Business Memberships in Tennessee, and a first time club from Georgia. Our members are loyal and dedicated just like our business's who offer our individual members opportunities an and savings you wont want to pass up. Let's all please warmly welcome the following new members of the SFWDA family; 

       
 We're also making strides in our Membership Database through the support of Lucas Weidner our newly elected Co-Director of Membership as he aggregates data on daily basis in-between breaks at his real job and with his little spare time as a father he has single handed managed to wrangle up all of our historical membership data and compiled it into one clean database of approximately 4,300 unique identities. We plan to be reaching out to the most recent part of that group in the near future to invite  them back once again into SFWDA and our free Newsletter Subscription as blaze forward into 2015.  

 
2014 Membership Status; As discussed in our Annul Meeting last weekend our current membership numbers are rising quickly. To date we have the following active Business, Individual, and Club / Group Members;
 

• 21 active businesses 
• 786 total active people
• 409 active people who are club members
• 377 active people who are individuals
• 27 of which are premium individual members
• 34 total clubs / groups 
• 18 active clubs / groups

  We already have commitments from several additional large Clubs and Groups within the next month. Who will be the next Business to join forces in our mission for 2015? 
 

  ET4WD just assisted us with hosting our productive and efficient Annual Meeting last weekend in Oak Ridge, TN. If you were not able to attend in person or on the webinar we also have the complete presentation posted as a PDF file on our website message board.

 As we wrap up a successful year lets all take a moment to reflect on the success of 2014 and remember those who helped make this happen.  We have an amazing and diverse Board of Directors, Delegates, and Leadership Council deeply involved in a variety of aspects within SFWDA day to day operations. However, it is only with the support of each individual like yourself that we will continue to make it happen. So Thank You to all the individuals reading this all the way to the last detail to stay in tune. Thank You to the many clubs who collectively volunteer thousands of hours to numerous and elaborate volunteer efforts and Thank You to those business's who continue to support us among our common goal. 
 

* Conservation * Education * Recreation

2014 Annual Meeting Wrap Up Report

 Thank you to all who attended this important meting. This past Saturday at the DoubleTree hotel in Oak Ridge, TN we had a great 2014 Annual Meeting. We not only had a great turnout in person (near occupancy limit) but we also had a larger than expected attendance for our online webinar. By the time the meeting began we had exceeded our 100 person allotment for this webinar. This turned out to be a very productive and efficient meeting, and we received tons of great feedback from the attendees. 

 Here are a few pictures from the meeting. I have also attached a PDF version of the complete PowerPoint slideshow presented to the audience during our meeting. 

The Presentation has been converted into a PDF file for easy viewing. Feel free to download from the link below.  

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